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I’ve been thinking about time a lot recently – how we create and manipulate histories and the present in video games and in general – so you’ll forgive me if my end-of-year choices are a bit Back to the Futurey. Read the rest of this entry »

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My career in Street Fighter was a painfully short-lived experience. For a long time, I’d been trying to find a fighting game to really get into and to help me understand a genre I’d always been quietly interested in but entirely apart from. After being gifted Ultra Street Fighter 4 back in 2014, I was quickly hooked on the technical mastery and quick action – a few runs of Arcade, and I was even starting to feel competent. But getting good at Street Fighter, or any traditional fighting game, requires a strong level of commitment: lonely hours spent mastering frame data, grinding against opponents and the local competition. After a disastrous showing at a Dundee tournament, I was out.

Fighting games, I figured, just weren’t for me – until Absolver came around.

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Absolver, the martial arts fighting game that you’re not very good at, now has a ‘prestige’ system that lets high-level players redistribute their skill points. Its latest update also brings Halloween masks, new cloaks, a means of obtaining more loot for post-level 60 players, and a way to turn duplicate pieces of gear into salvage, letting you sew up the holes in your natty old trousers. As someone who’s been bashing and jabbing since the game’s release, usually at fighters far superior to himself, I can confirm this is Absolver’s biggest update so far, and it offers some of the most sensible and in-demand features for the game’s audience of skinny biffers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Skinny weirdos in masks have been beating me up all month in martial arts biff-em-up Absolver [official site]. They’re called Absolvers because they grant absolution to my face with an endless barrage of kicks and slaps. Perhaps, with this latest update, I can finally treat an opponent to a sin-cleansing uppercut of my own. Patch 1.06 is mainly a bug-fixing effort, but it also disempowers the fastest attacks and tweaks absorbing guards. There’s also a handout of six masks based on other games by publisher Devolver, like a Hotline Miami chicken mask.Read the rest of this entry »

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Pow! Whack! Absolve! The martial arts biffing game Absolver [official site] is my hot cup of videogames at the moment. But like its slap-happy characters, it’s a bit on the skinny side. Once you’ve completed the story, there’s little remaining for the PvP-averse. And even online fighters might find themselves at a loss after mastering all the moves. So I asked creators Sloclap what’s in their fightpipes. The sad part is that new attacks, bosses and PvE areas are all at the back of the queue. The good news is there are a lot of small improvements coming, including a way to redistribute your character’s skill points, and pigments for changing the colour of your raggedy trousers.Read the rest of this entry »

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The martial arts brawler Absolver [official site] is a beautiful arena for skinny people who are both very polite and incredulously angry. It’s a great bruiser but isn’t without serious flaws. The sometimes-insufferable lag, for one thing, is killing the 1v1 dueling mode for many. A small patch has recently been added, bringing cross-region support and some “improvements to server connection”, say developers Sloclap, with more fixes and improvements incoming. But a lot of players, myself included, are still encountering teleporty punches, stuttering kicks, disconnections and unstable matchmaking. That means toothless frowns all round.Read the rest of this entry »

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Martial arts fighting game Absolver [official site] is keeping me and many others happy with its fluid recreation of both fisticuffs and feeticuffs. But the move that has the brawling community most excited isn’t a whip-fast spinning kick or a sharp elbow to the top of the head – it’s a simple, shame-inducing slap to the face. Now, the most disrespectful thing you could do to another fighter is to get them down to their last sliver of health, then finish them with a single slap.Read the rest of this entry »

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Who owns those odd voices? It’s the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show and guess what – we’re all in the same room, with our actual bodies. Unprecedented. And there’s a special guest this week too. Chris Bratt of Eurogamer joins us to talk about the alien-murdering of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It’s a Brattcast! While Pip has been playing teen angst drama-llama Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and I’m still trying to discover an impossibly powerful attack in Absolver. Come listen.

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Our review has now been updated with post-release impressions. Read them below!

I stumbled into Raslan like a newborn foal, aimless and on wobbly legs. Absolver [official site] and its labyrinthine city are not gentle with Prospects, the masked warriors who make up the game’s players and AI-controlled enemies, but I assume that ritualistic combat trials aren’t typically easy-going affairs. Regardless, for the last week I have persevered, fighting my way from lowly Prospect to the coveted position of Absolver. I remain absolutely lost.

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The Steam Charts aren’t, as you may have been led to expect, large sprawling maps depicting the locations of all the world’s known steam. They were, but due to government pressure we’ve altered them to list the top ten selling games on Steam, in reverse order, like a rocket taking off. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hark, it’s the sweet vocal vibrations of the humble RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. The lads (lads lads) are back from the bright lights of Gamescom and ready to chat hard about the games they saw. But Pip is only giving us a maximum of three words about each one. Madness. Never mind, we can talk more verbosely about the alien-shooting of the Destiny 2 beta, or the otherworldly kickboxing of Absolver, or the other-alien-shooting of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It’s been quite a good week.Read the rest of this entry »

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I was already ‘jazzed’, ‘stoked’, and ‘ziffed’ for the launch of open-world fighting game Absolver [official site] later this month, and now the weeks beyond that are sounding good too. New fighting styles and moves will arrive in free content updates after launch, developers Sloclap and publishers Devolver Digital announced yesterday, as well as features like a 3v3 mode and spectating. In a game where every player builds their own fighting style from different stances and attacks, I’d certainly like to safely watch other people’s technique. Read the rest of this entry »

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The beautiful art of drunken boxing is the fourth fighting style confirmed for Absolver [official site], the fine-looking online combat game from Sloclap and Devolver Digital. Drunken boxing is one of my favourite styles to see in kung fu movies, punchmen rolling and staggering as their momentum swings into unexpected hits, and I’m certainly excited to build my own drunken boxing combos within Absolver’s custom fighting styles. Look at this cool fighting: Read the rest of this entry »

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If you too want to grow up to be, be an Absolver and punch faces in online multiplayer melee action, make a note: Sloclap’s Absolver [official site] will launch on August 29th. That’s the news from publishers Devolver Digital, who have also whipped together a trailer explaining how Absolver’s biffing and learned custom fighting styles work. It looks smashing. Adam called it one of his favourite games at E3 last June and yup, I want a go too. Check this out: Read the rest of this entry »

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When our Adam played Absolver [official site] last year, he declared the online melee murderfest “one of E3’s best games.” Oh we’re all very happy that you had such a good time, but what about us? We won’t get to play until later this year. No scampering around an open world duffing up enemies and other players, not for us yet. If it’s any comfort, we can watch a 15-minute new video with one of the devs explaining the ins and outs of PvP face-mashing. Hey, this does look fun. Read the rest of this entry »

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As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we’re looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one – in the world of games at least – but, ever the optimists, we’re hoping next year will be even better.

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E3 2016 has been finished for a couple of weeks, giving us time to wash the taste of LA smog from our mouths and reflect upon the games we saw there. This seems like a good time to talk about what we want to see from those games next, when they no doubt appear at Gamescom 2016 in August. What games are we most hoping to play, to see new trailers of, or hoping will reveal a different side of themselves in Cologne?

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I saw good games at E3 and I saw great games, but no other game surprised and delighted me as much as Absolver [official site]. It’s a game about punching and kicking opponents in an open world, but describing it as a beat ‘em up seems unfair. It’s a martial arts simulator, with elements of both Dark Souls and Zeno Clash but a combat system all its own.

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Sloclap, a recently-formed indie studio made up of ex-Ubisoft fellows, have today announced their debut project: Absolver [official site]. Devolver Digital are publishing this uber-stylish martial arts-inspired “online combat RPG” affair and, although a distinct step away from their usual pixellated roster, this one looks equally cool. Let’s have a look, shall we?